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Topic: Paypal is the devil (Read 7540 times)

Oh man.... I am really ticked. PayPal just sent me a notice that I am using the P2P option too much (the sending money as a "gift" method). The notice threatens to disable permanently my P2P ability if I receive any further P2P that is for merchandise. Dammit! Bastards! How the heck am I supposed to do things like receive royalties and the occasional payment without triggering paypal to turn P2P off? Anyone else get one of these messages?

We recently changed our pricing so that all PayPal customers can receivemoney from friends and family within the US for free. PayPal merchants receiving money as payment for a purchase, continue to incur fees.

We’re not sure if you are aware of this, but we noticed that some of your customers are sending you personal payments for purchases of items or services. Unfortunately, this violates our rules, and we need your help correcting this. Please don’t ask or allow your customers to use personal payments to pay for their purchases.

If we continue to see such activity after April 5, 2011, we may have to disable your ability to receive personal payments, and then you will payfees for all money received through PayPal.

You can find more information about payment types and fees in sections 4.2 and 8 of our User Agreement – just click “Legal Agreements” at the bottom of any PayPal page.

If you have any questions, concerns, or think we may have made a mistake, please contact us at P2P@paypal.com. Thank you for helping us resolves this matter.

Jesse, you're saying Paypal is the devil because they're asking you to stop skirting their system, which allows them to get paid for the service they provide. They allow people to designate some payments as "personal" as a favor to their account holders, to let people occasionally do things like send money between friends or family and avoid fees for non-professional transactions.

But if you're selling CDs and telling customers to designate all payments as "personal" then you're the one screwing Paypal over, not the other way around. I don't love paying a percentage of our sales to Paypal or to our credit card processing company, but I also don't think it would be fair to ask them to provide those services to us for free.

Geez mike. What gives? Shocked you are so defensive of PP, gotta say I was disapointed in your response.

I receive a royalty payment every couple months or so, and I sell gear on Craigslist, and occassionally someone asks to buy a huge lot of releases for a discount. In those cases you're damn straight I avoid the paypal fees. If I sell on eBay or people place an order with a paypal button then I pay the fees. Why the heck should I have to pay fees if the buyer agrees to risk their payment by not being covered under buyer protection if we both agree to that transaction?

Sorry you're disappointed, Jesse, but I think you're in the wrong here. You wanting to prevent Paypal from being compensated for their services is no different from a music pirate wanting to gain access to your music without compensating you.

It's the same "Why should I have to pay if I can find a way around it? I don't want to pay, so I shouldn't have to," mentality. As someone who sells music, do you really think the dividing line between "should pay" and "shouldn't pay" is whether or not the potential buyer can get away with not paying? If you see a difference, maybe it's only because you're on the opposite side of the transaction.

Wow. Well, I couldn't disagree more with you and resent you saying I'm screwing them over or it's akin to piracy.

So, just to be clear, if you sold a guitar to a personal friend of yours but they could only conveniently or quickly pay you by paypal that you would accept the fees in that case?

And if someone is sending you a royalty payment statement which you have to pay taxes on you would still pay the PP fees?

In my opinion, these are different than merchandise sales to/from individuals.

I will concede to your point on CD sales, but as I mentioned, this is a very rare occurrence (like twice a year) and there is a good percentage of profit taken up in a PP fee if I accepted it that way in a discounted package - I will just have to build in the paypal fees to make up for it. Be that as it may, I hear ya there. But I don't like being accused of screwing or skirting a system and am disappointed in your choice of words toward me. I'm not a con artist.

Just a note that I honestly had no idea that it was illegal (or otherwise against policy) to receive a payment as a "gift" from someone if the buyer agrees to it. Again, if a person buys via P2P of their own choice, then I'm not sure why I am in the wrong. I never coerce, force, or otherwise limit people (in the dozen or so times I've accepted a payment this way over the past 5 years) if they choose to pay via P2P. Also, in the P2P section, there are 5 choices:

GiftLiving expensePayment owedOtherCash Advance

So, what would "payment owed" be? Wouldn't that qualify as a payment from a friend (or even an acquaintance) who owed me for something (or is "payment owed" supposed to mean that I lent someone some money and they're paying me back)? Not to mention the completely open-ended "other". I just don't see where I am doing anything wrong quite frankly.

Well, I figured you'd get offended Jesse, so I should have just let it go. I'm sorry if my argument made you feel attacked but I was trying to make the point that people who offer goods (even intangible goods like electronic services or downloadable content) and want to get paid sometimes encounter people who would rather get the goods for free. In that sense, this is the flip side of the music piracy debate.

I was going to go into more detail about how I interpret Paypal's policies or use their services myself, but that isn't really important. I think you're reading insults way beyond what I intended... so I'm going to drop this.

If others want to debate Paypal's personal/gift option, they can go ahead.

If you knew I'd be offended they why would you say I am screwing PP over. If I had said that to you or anyone else that didn't know they were doing anything wrong they'd be right to be offended. Heck, I even conceded on the big cd packages. But a sale of a piece of gear between personal friends ought not be considered a fee-able transaction... Is fee-able a word?

My two cents: Paypal adds value by giving buyers and sellers convenience, and they should be compensated for that added value. If I want to send my brother $50, I can mail him a check, and he can deal with cashing it, depositing it, etc. Or I can send the money via Paypal, and with a couple clicks it's in his account. Shouldn't Paypal collect a fee for providing us with this service?

Banks have traditionally given away services (free checking, etc.) because their costs of providing these services can be recouped by investing your money, and earning interest on it; that's why they have minimum balance requirements: to ensure that there is enough money for them to invest to get a return. Paypal works the same way, to an extent; however, they don't make investments (loans to other customers) to make money, and they don't require a minimum balance to use their service - they charge a percentage on each transaction.

We can argue whether their fees are too much for what they provide; but in a free market, we are free to go elsewhere if we don't like it. There are plenty of Paypal Sucks websites - clearly some people don't like them. But charging for hteir services hardly seems like a good reason, imo.

And for the record, I don't think you're a thief, Jesse!

Logged

I wish I was a Glowworm; a Glowworm's never glum. 'Cause how can you be grumpy, when the sun shines out your bum?

Yeah, I guess I'm with Mike on this. Paypal offers a very useful service for free (quickly transfering money to friends/family/etc for free). But there is no reason why transactions involving the selling of goods should be free. Its reasonable that they charge for their services and your convenience. You can always have people give you cash or send a cheque if that doesn't suit.

I started out mostly meaning to tease you, Jesse, and didn't intend to call you evil or a thief or the exact equivalent of a pirate. I mentioned the music pirate's mindset as of a way of sort of half-winkingly making you think about the similarity between what you were saying about Paypal, and what a kid who downloads music says about "the music industry."

I do think Paypal deserves compensation for their services (though as others have said, maybe their share ought to be smaller) and I stand by my original intention which was to nudge you into recognizing that maybe you should look at the Paypal fee situation from the other side.

Hey, everybody, Jesse is out seeing OMD live today -- that's Orchestral Maneuvers in the Dark, young 'uns, a electronic pop band from the 80s.

So he's out partying at the Hard Rock Cafe, and drunk-posting to Facebook, and hasn't been able to follow up on this topic... but he wanted to make sure everybody understood, there are no hard feelings between me & Jesse. I see Jesse as sort of a little brother, in the sense that a little brother is an annoying, pesky little dope who needs a noogie and a wedgie, one after the other. Have fun at the show, Jesse!

Aw shucks... this could be the Schlitz talkin' but I love you man, not in a gay way, just in the big older brother way. Like really old... so old you're almost a father figure, but not in that Catholic-pervy-father way, more like father and son.